When Haley Kamberalis started training to be an electrician the IBEW Local in Boston, she was met with a combination of obstacles — she was not only the lone woman in her classes but she is also partially blind and deaf.
Yet, within just a couple years, she received her license and soon became a project manager at age 25, a position that allowed her to support her child, whom she was raising alone.
“I had zero student loans with a skilled trade that will never be obsolete,” she said.
Kamberalis, who spoke in Concord on Friday, is the perfect example of the types of opportunities American Jobs Plan hopes to accomplish, Vice President Kamala Harris said during a visit to New Hampshire.
“I’m here today because of the importance to New Hampshire in terms of what we’re doing with the American jobs, and what we’re doing and investing in job training, and building back up the workforce,” Harris said.
Harris stopped by the Granite State on Friday to promote the administration’s sweeping $2 trillion jobs and infrastructure plan that touches on everything from road repairs, to affordable housing, to child care.
Harris started her trip with a visit to Plymouth, N.H., where she attended a listening session on rural broadband. Harris likened the plan’s $100 billion investment in broadband services to the Rural Electrification Act that brought power to communities without electricity in 1936.
“We are going to have a national commitment to make sure everyone has access to the basic services they need and right now in the year of our Lord 2021, that is broadband,” Harris said.
More than 60% of Granite Staters live in an area where there is only one internet provider while about 5% have no sufficient broadband infrastructure available, which has become a growing problem during the pandemic, as doctor appointments and schools have transitioned online.
“This really is an incredible moment in our history, not unlike what we did in 1936,” Harris said. “Let’s get it done. Let’s get it done.”
At the headquarters for one of the state’s electrical workers unions, IBEW, where Harris met Kamberalis, the vice president said the jobs plan would catch the United States up to countries that have regularly invested in infrastructure.
“Our country has fallen behind when it comes to being competitive in the world market, particularly when it comes to investing in our workforce,” Harris said.
The plan promises to address some of the largest infrastructure issues facing New Hampshire including expanding broadband, improving public transportation, and repairing roads and bridges.
The plan also intends to throw billions of dollars into expanding home-based care for the elderly and disabled, one of the more unexpected components of the infrastructure plan.
“What do we need to do to make it possible to not make it difficult for people to go to work?” she asked. “Well, home care is part of that. Child care, caring for family members with disabilities, caring for our elders. All of that needs to happen if you want to be able to go to work.”
(Pool material from reporter Kevin Landrigan was used in this story.)